Comments on: Chief Army Chaplain in Afghanistan distributes local-language Bibles, orders congregation to convert localshttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 30 Mar 2015 20:24:05 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: maitrixhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-486658
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-486658Hunt for Jesus those who hunt for Allah! Yes, stop the proliferation of Islam by proselytizing for Jesus! The more we are different, the more we are the stupid.
]]>By: Xopherhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-487684
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-487684Timothy: You’re quite welcome. I hate it when people who agree on fundamentals argue over a misunderstanding. And btw I agree that an aborted heinous act is less bad than a completed heinous act.

One minor quibble, before people jump all over you: the bibles were in Pashto and Dari (both Indo-Iranian languages, thus Indo-European, thus related distantly to English), not Arabic (a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Amharic, but not to the Indo-European family). Most Afghans don’t speak Arabic except in the mosque.

]]>By: zebbarthttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-485383
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-485383Xopher, we can agree to disagree about whether it is genuinely possible to give up intrinsic rights. I was talking about existential rights, not legal rights. When the two clash, which side are you on? But I think you are painting a black and white picture of a complex and diverse situation. It’s not all imperial drones, guerrilla zealots, and downtrodden peasants. I’m for letting human interaction and relationships develop freely, “our mission” and “their narrative” be damned.

Antinous, you’re right I do live in a world without newspapers and tv. I basically get my information from radio, and the amazing reportage of This American Life, Democracy Now, and Alternative Radio have dispelled the caricatures of Iraq, Afghanistan and the US military that often dominate these conversations. “…but it is a Muslim country.” Interesting. You may concede the land and population of Afghanistan to hard line Islamicists, but I’d let the occupied themselves decide about the ideas of the occupiers. Fundamentalist Islam actually has a short and limited role in Afghanistan. The isolation of the last 20 years makes it hard to know how the culture has shifted, but I’d bet most people there are still moderate to conservative and not too excited about the issue of religion. I don’t think we should participate in the hard-liners’ domination of those people. And of course I would not object to a Satanist soldier sharing his beliefs and literature with anyone. I’d be fascinated to see how everyone would have reacted if this story had been about soldiers getting reprimanded for talking about promoting rationalism and handing out translations of Thomas Paine.

I knew “Arabic” was a cop-out, but I was posting from my iPhone and I felt that was “close enough for government work” – I was too lazy to really g et into it then – but then again, this isn’t quite government work, is it – we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

“Unfortunately for world peace, the Big Mac Attack Rule finally broke down in 1999. On 24 March 1999, NATO began its air attack on Yugoslavia. Faced with angry nationalism, vandalism and boycotts, all the McDonalds in Yugoslavia shut their doors on 26 March. This means that for two full days, McDonaldland was wrenched asunder by its first intramural war ever. When McD finally reopened on 17 April, it was an occassion of public celebration almost matching the end of the Kosovo War itself.

McDonald’s opened in Panama in 1971, so the 1989 war with the US would be another, earlier exception.

The Kargil Exception: Pakistan’s McD opened in Karachi on 19 Sept. 1998, while India’s opened on 13 Oct 1996.”

@Shelby Davis #20

I don’t buy the cultural incompatibility argument, Huntington. Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, and has been a democracy with competitive elections since 1950. India, too, has long been a democracy, and India has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Iran, while having a government that is largely undemocratic, has had semi-competitive presidential and parliamentary elections since the early 1990s. The constraints on democracy in Iran are institutionally imposed; the people themselves are more than capable of democracy, but operate within a government that allows very little expression of that.

As counterpoint, many nations with christian populations have had dictators: Pinochet, Franco, the Junta in Argentina, Mussolini, every other French government from the revolution until the 4th republic, the 2nd and 3rd Reichs in Germany, all the governments of Eastern Europe under the USSR, and Cromwell in England. Yet no one says the Chileans, the Spanish, the Argentinians, the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Polish, or the British are incapable of having democracy. And no one goes out of their way to point out the numerous historical precedents for dictatorship among christian populations.

You said yourself that Japan did fine developing a capitalism democracy in the post-war era without Christianity. South Korea and Taiwan did it too. The necessity of the Christian religion in creating stable, capitalist democracies is not only unproven, it is an unfounded assumption.

Cultural imperialism has no place in this world.

]]>By: wolfiesmahttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484874
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484874ZEBBART FTW!
]]>By: Timothy Huttonhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-487691
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-487691In a way, the tone of some here reminds me of something that happened a few years ago her ein the US of A – the minority party wanted to investigate the majority party over some crazy allegations that they had no hard proof of – the logic was that the aqusations were so serious that they needed to be investigated, even if there was no evidence to support the aqusations in the first place, because the stakes were to high to wait for the facts to become known!

I feel that people in the military tend to have a strong belief system, they live by a strict military code, they defend principles on a daily basis, and make hard choices on a regular basis – I deeply respect that, and I choose to fill in the gaps in the “reporting” in this case to reflect my beliefs – others apaprently went a different way, and that’s fine – my point is the footage isn’t the “smoking gun” Cory’s title made it look like.

]]>By: Moriartyhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484623
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484623I stand corrected regarding MacDonald’s, then. A more generalized and accurate statement might be that the more trade that occurs between nations, the less likely there is to be armed conflict. That’s one reason why the U.S. and the Soviet Union had a 50 year cold war, and the U.S. and China are good pals.
]]>By: allenrlhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-485391
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-485391So if you don’t like it, stop bickering on boing boing and go do something about it. Go become someone influential and put an end to it.
]]>By: Antinous / Moderatorhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484884
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484884a six foot two white guy with red hair speaking english about Jesus won’t be confused for a local

No, in Afghanistan, he’ll be mistaken for Prince Harry. Except for the Jesus part.

But you seem to be under the misimpression that Afghans belong to some alien little dark race. Afghans are hard-core Caucasian. Full range of hair colors. Lots of blue or green eyes. Pale (albeit sunburned) skin. You’re looking too hard at the beard and the turban and not hard enough at the person wearing them.

Yeah, the point generally holds true, though – wealthier nations don’t fight wars against each other; democracy (like having McDonalds, like having golf courses) correlates really strongly to wealth. Here’s the link where I pulled that information from: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm

]]>By: Antinous / Moderatorhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-485400
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-485400So if you don’t like it, stop bickering on boing boing and go do something about it. Go become someone influential and put an end to it.

I hear that the Taliban is recruiting. Would that count?

]]>By: Antinous / Moderatorhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484890
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484890It’s not reasonable or right to expect soldiers to subvert their personal identity for 24 hours a day for 18 months straight.

I’d be interested in seeing research on the need to proselytize being an intrinsic part of personal identity. Is this a clinical diagnosis and, if so, shouldn’t it prevent one from being given a weapon?

]]>By: markfreihttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484640
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484640While I doubt it is a popular cause amongst typical Boing Boing readers, perhaps this might drum home the importance of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. While I’d imagine a good majority of gay US servicemen and women are Christian of some flavor, I can’t imagine that any of them would align themselves with the Hensley’s of the world.

Harper’s has been doing a LOT of feature journalism in this area – it’s worth a trip through the back issues at the library or online if you are keen to learn more.

Cultural relativism is not demeaning, and saying that ‘American Style Democracy’ ( TM ) is not well suited for all nations is in no way insulting or demeaning, and it doesn’t mean that they arent ‘fit for’ or ‘suited to ‘ or ‘capable of’ any kind of representative government. It’s not – to use a popular term on the right – a ‘Code Word’ – unless YOU want to be demeaning or insulting to the people you are talking to.

It’s not that a people are Muslim, or Christian, or Athiest, or Noodlearian or any other religion, nor that they are not well educated enough ( though that can be an issue ), or any other single factor that makes ‘American Style Democracy’ a bad fit. It’s a commingling of a lot of factors.

The US has a strong cultural imperative to integrate. Within a generation or two, the overwhelming majority of Americans see themselves as Americans first, and any other ethnic or cultural extraction second. Even within the US, regional, state or territorial loyalties are nearly non-existent and where they intersect the public sphere at all, play out only within a defined political context. In spite of what pundits like Lou Dobbs want you to believe, we are exceptional in this respect… people who come here, and stay here tend to integrate amazingly quickly compared to other parts of the world.

Much different than a nation where tribal affiliation is held superior to national identity- often because there is no persistent social stability of a wider scope. Where government on a larger scale is seen as suspect at best, and hostile at worst.
And in regions where national boundaries are defined not by established cultural norms, but by arbitrary colonial border designations.

We also have 200 years of geographic isolation. While we have not always been a predominant military power, we have generally had a military advantage over domestic threats, and force projection by any other nation was slow, expensive and logistically demanding.

We are also a resource rich nation, with a tremendously powerful economy which removes many of the constraints of privation – and has for the bulk of our history. Our laws were written, and our national character shaped by enlightenment era ideals, and the notion of secular government has been one we have found worth fighting for since the before the first drafts on the Constitution.

Lastly, we have one more cultural advantage that is implicit in all of the above. Our most deeply held cultural and social convictions are no more than 250 years old. Unlike many other nations and regions of the world, we don’t have institutions, traditions and rivalries spanning thousands of years. We don’t have to deal with the likes of caste systems, blood feuds and echoes of past empires.

Remove any one of these factors, and our flavor of governance becomes hard. Remove more than one, which is the case in many of the places defined as ‘culturally unsuited’ to our style of democracy, and we’d be as likely to fail as they are.

The notion that a people, a region, a nation have to find their own path to a free form of government is simply common sense. Do you really thing american representative democracy will work in a nation whose strongest segment of the economy is the illegal narcotics trade. Whose largest persistent level of social order for the last 300 years has been tribal. Where, for a similar length of time, any form of central authority has been either colonial or foreign military. Where for 2000 years before that, it was seen as a buffer state – a nation between great empires that was kept strong – but not too strong to advance the interests of the great powers around them. Do you believe that a nation like that is going to slide quickly or easily into a federal system with weak states and a strong central government? The nation, of course, is Afghanistan… and the obvious answer is no, it is not.

We couldn’t even manage a federal system out of the gate. It took 200 years of incremental power grabs by the central government to undo state autonomy in most issues, and now you say it’s demeaning to suggest that another nation, with fewer advantages and more challenges might have difficulty with it?

]]>By: Timothy Huttonhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484648
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484648Wow Cory, did you even listen to the words on the tape that didn’t come from the voiceover?

The bibles were printed by one serviceman’s church and sent to him directly. He brought them to the church service and discussed it with those in his church group. The voiceover says the soldiers had the bibles printed – this is wrong.

The soldiers are seen discussing the very rule that prevents them from sppreading their religious belief “in country”, after being prompted by their chaplin. They all knew the regulation, and no one is shown breaking that regulation – instead they discuss it. One soldier offers that it isn’t prostelitizing if they simply hand out the bibles as a gift – that is as close as they get. (I have to believe that if they actually were handing out the bibles, the filmaker would have found a way to capture that – the absence of such scenes weakens his case)

All Christian churches I am familiar with encourage their members to go out and bring others into the fold – this is not sinister, this is quite common. The sermon/liturgy isn’t specific about converting locals or fellow soldiers, you and the voice over assume they are talking about locals. It is, I have to believe, very common for a military chaplin to use military terms and examples, so his stories and messages resonate with his military followers.

To put it another way, there is actually nothing wrong here, except the accusations the voiceover makes – but never proves. This “documentary” aspires to be compared with a Michael Moore “documentary”, but it fails to rise to even that low level of accuracy (at least Michael Moore shows people doing bad things, sometimes out of context, but you can actually see something).

Let’s make a hypothetical, a camera crew comes to a middle school recycling club in NJ (where there is no deposit on bottles and cans), and one of the kids comes in to the meeting and says he has a great idea – we should take the bottles and cans marked for deposits in nearby states (NY, CY, others) and take them there, and get 5 or 10 cents each, we can then use that money to buy carbon credits for our school dance!

Then teacher stands up and says you all know there is no deposit here in NJ right, and they all say right. Then another kid says “but we don’t know for sure these bottles and cans weren’t bought in CT or NY, why can’t we just assume they were and collect the deposit?”

Then the teacher says “Let’s talk about it…” and the film crew stops filming.

This filmaker would say the kids were planning to commit fraud, at a school-sanctioned event (recycling club) and were planning to take them across state lines to commit this fraud, exposing the adult driving the car to federal prosecution, maybe even for transporting a minor across state line for the purposes of commiting a crime…

The film clip is wrong, and because it apparently resonated with a prejudice/opinion you already had, you apparently didn’t challenge what you heard/saw. Pity.

Apparently religion is always fair-game at Boing Boing…

]]>By: Daemonhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484906
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484906The Hounds of Tindalos will eat the Hounds of Heaven for lunch.
]]>By: Chuckhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484652
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484652>”Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

Weren’t the Hounds of Heaven supposed to be a bunch of Italian werewolves that went to Hell every night to fight vampires? (No luck Googling so far.)

No, he didn’t. The Chief Chaplain didn’t distribute bibles, he is simply shown giving a sermon – he wasn’t at the meeting shown in the footage where the handing out of bibles was discussed.

Also, he reminds the congregants that as christians it is their duty to be “soldiers” for Jesus and bring others into the flock – the same as any priest/minister in a christian church in the US. He doesn’t specifically instruct them to convert locals, and the conversion of military personnel is certainly “fair game”.

Cory went on:

US Army chaplains in Afghanistan have called on American soldiers to spread the word of Jesus to Afghanistan. They’re distributing Bibles printed in local languages, too — though the Army subsequently confiscated a bunch of the Bibles and reprimanded some of the soldiers involved.

A video tape of one Chaplain leading a discussion about the possibility of handing out bibles does not mean that all US Army Chaplains were engaged in this (as Cory would have you believe).

No bibles were distributed in this footage, period. Were any bibles distributed by any soldiers, ever in the middle east conflicts we’ve been engaged in? I don’t know, but there is no such action shown in this footage…

I recently read an article that they ceased allowing any blogging for deployed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. I apparently didn’t check the date of the article and after reviewing it was about two years ago and was lifted after a month or so. So yes they did, but no they don’t. Thanks for the correction or I wouldn’t have seen the update.

zebbart,

This isn’t an opinion. This is a fact (Both Xopher and I are correct), when you join the military you give up certain rights. This was implied until 1962’s 87th congress sat down and actually made it law. Then it went to the supreme court and was supported. This isn’t something you can agree to disagree about. You can agree to disagree that you like it, you can agree to disagree that it sucks and is against the founding father’s best wishes. That doesn’t make it not so. When you turn 18 and join the military you give up certain rights. This is why a military tribunal doesn’t have the same constraints as a normal trial and why the detainees at Gitmo wanted a regular trial. The presumed innocent, jury of your peers and all the jury people needing to be in agreement are a little different. It is fact.

I apologize if I have come across rather harsh on this particular post. This is something I have a hard time with. I don’t think people’s rights should be stripped, particularly 18 year old kids who barely understand what they are giving up, or how drastically it can screw up the rest of their lives. I know that a military is a necessary evil in the world of governments and such, but it sucks and I am not a fan of the need of them. I do however give mad props to the men and women of the armed services who provide our country service and who perform their duties with true honor, dignity in the defense of lives. They are heroes and deserve my respect, not so much the dishonorable jerks who give the military a bad name, do despicable, unnecessary and evil things.

-Tizroc

]]>By: Keeper of the Lanternhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484663
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484663During the Opium wars, the missionaries came over on the same boats in which the Opium was being forcibly shipped into China.

This would seem an equally mistaken activity and belies how utterly oblivious these types are to the sensitivities of pressing their faith upon others during extremely inappropriate circumstances.

On the other hand, from these Christian Soliders’ standpoint, the war is between the US and Afghanistan, two earthly kingdoms. They are merely along for the ride and will believe they are commanded to take advantage of this opportunity.

it’s a bizarre situation that probably no one could “prove” is inappropriate, no less than bin Laden is now laughing about how attacking the US has eventually caused the whole world to wobble through the Iraq invasion and subsequent sacking of the US economy.

]]>By: WalterBillingtonhttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484664
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484664On wars, more specifically terrorists – apologies for the lack of reference, but I do recall a “study” (this can’t have been too hard) demonstrating that all terrorist movements were against a geographically-occupying power.

Possibly wars were temporarily religiously-based (crusades etc), but now that religion has thankfully lost its potion, passion and attraction, we return to fighting over more pragmatic things than the name of the skygod to whom we supposedly bow.

Onward Christian sooooldiers, marching as to war! With the cross of Jesus going on before!

/hymn

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-486204
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-486204In the article on military.com that the original post linked to, they mention that this was taking place in Bagram. It’s ironic that this attempt at evangelization is taking place at the site of one of our torture prisons. (See the movie Taxi to the Dark Side, for more info. Admittedly you can’t condemn an entire base for what goes on in one part of it.)
Maybe the first step in winning people over to the God of love and the Prince of Peace is not torturing them?
]]>By: inserthttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-484671
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-484671I saw this story, with the video, on Al-Jazeera (the Arabic one, not the English one) yesterday. I imagine that Muslim leaders and the various Muslim streets probably aren’t too happy.
]]>By: tizrochttp://boingboing.net/2009/05/06/chief-army-chaplain.html#comment-485183
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-485183Zebbart,

Uh, freedom of speech is here in the United States. Many countries do not have this right. Next, when you join the military you give up certain rights, so that is kind of expected. Hence they cannot post on blogs (orders), they cannot convert (orders)… do you get the general theme?

I think the “we don’t attack Christians” trope has been refuted well enough, but also: North Korea was still fairly Christian in 1950 (as there was no cultural divide whatsoever before we split it using a National Geographic map)–in fact Dear Leader was raised in a very devout Protestant home; and the Serbs, as we remind the world every day, are Christian, and we bombed the hell out of them to save our beloved Muslim friends.

Iraq with Hussein, also, was considered perhaps the most tolerant country in the Middle-East for Christians besides Israel, a title now surely held by Iran and its client states. But that doesn’t fit with the narrative propagated by US foreign policy or the internet.

So, yes, it’s money.

And Afghanistan had a kind-of sort-of democracy that kind-of sort-of worked for much of the mid-20th century; basically a republican monarchy with warlords as local government with no central oversight–basically the GOP’s dream come true. The Taliban in part initially wanted to restore this government, or at least the royal family from that time (which they have). And that went pretty well, right?.